Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar

The Good
Ah, classic SHMUPs. My wife was watching me play Gradius III (SNES) the other day and she asked me, "Why do you like these games so much?" Well, how could you not like them? Try this - go pick up the GameCube release Ikaruga and play it for five minutes. Did you die? Of course you did! Modern SHMUPS throw ten billion bullets at you in an obscene mockery of gameplay. They're quarter eaters, plain and simple, designed so that arcade operators (what few remain anymore) can reap maximum profit per cabinet space.

Lightening Force is not like that. Is it spastic, like all good SHMUPs should be? Yes, of course. Will you die, and die repeatedly? Yes, of course. Will your deaths, however, be YOUR fault, due to subtle miscalculations that you COULD have prevented had you been more focused on the game? Yes, of course, and that's where this game is beautiful.

If you play Lightening Force (and other classic SHMUPs) skillfully, you will enter into a trance-like state. You will become completely immersed in the game, and only when you finally die will you be wrenched out of your communion back into the real world, only to marvel at the length of time you were able to avoid your inevitable death. You will curse your momentary mental infidelity with your mundane concerns and then shove them all aside so that you can finally beat this goddamn level already!

So yes, Lightening Force does this, and does it much better than the previous two Genesis entries in this semi-series, Thunder Force II and Thunder Force III (which are both recommended, though not as highly). The difficulty is high; expect to suffer quite a bit before you best that final boss (who's quite a doozy, I must say).

What's so cool about Lightening Force (indeed, the whole series) is that you have a lot of control over your ship. You never have to collect speed power ups, like you do in the Gradius games; you have complete control over whether you fly fast and zippy or slow and controlled. Plus, the weapon selection is fantastic - you will always be able to fire forward and backward, but the additional weapons you amass take the cake. I'm particularly fond of the Hunter weapon, which seeks out and destroys bad guys with aplomb. As a further bonus, when you die you lose only the weapon you were using at the time of your death - the rest you hold onto once you are reincarnated.

I could go on - the graphics are excellent, especially considering this is the Genesis. The music and sound effects are pretty good (again, considering this is the Genesis). In fact, there's really only one negative, and even then I must qualify it...

The Bad
Look, it's a fact - SHMUPs don't have good plots. Please understand, I don't have the manual, and it might have all the scintillating backstory that the actual game is missing - but I kind of doubt it. Video games have evolved considerably since 1993, and gamers today just expect that even the shoddiest actioner is going to have the rudiments of a story.

Such was not the case in 1993. Things were more visceral then - it was about the action and the visuals, baby, plain and simple, and who gives a shit about story? Show me Mode 7! Show me parallax scrolling!

In this sense, it's a little unfair to accuse Lightening Force of a crime post facto. Nevertheless, the flaw remains, small, insignificant in context, but there it is.

The Bottom Line
Certainly one of the finest SHMUPs on the Genesis. You really do owe it to yourself to hunt it down if you haven't played it already.